196: placebo, cure-all, inner muse in male form

So, I'm reading Deuteronomy 33 right now. I'm very tired. Like, physically I've been sick for over a week so my eyes kinda hurt and my throat and stomach. ANYWAY, I'm reading a little of Deuteronomy in an effort to feed my soul--which is also empty of strength--and some things I'm coming across are cool, like

"From His right hand
Came a fiery law for them.
Yes, He loves the people;
All His saints are in Your hand;
They sit down at Your feet;
Everyone receives Your words."

Isn't that a cool mental picture? "Fiery" law is just cool (Mt. Sinai, clouds, thunder, fire--what a spectacle that had been 40 yrs prior). And the direct statement of His love! And then us being in His hand (cf John 10). And all us like sheep sitting down and receiving His words.

And then I keep reading. "He was King in Jeshurun." Now, I feel like I should know what this means but tonight I'm like what is Jeshurun??? So I follow my unhelpful cross-reference over to 32:15 which says (and I remember reading this the other day), "Jeshurun grew fat." Well THAT didn't help. And I figure I could look up the Strong's definition on my phone but right now I'm just whinily, humorously frustrated that I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! (the Jeshurun part, not the fat part) (oh. Is Jeshurun a synonym for Israel? But why?? I don't remember 😩).

And somewhere around my whining and discovery of cool words like "fiery" it comes to me AGAIN that I, like, really wish I had a guy to text right now about it and someone to swap deep thoughts with.

(And no, if you're a guy I have tried to wrestle deep conversations out of that doesn't necessarily mean I'm on the hunt. A single does not have to be deprived of co-ed good conversations until (s)he is married. Or rather, I'd hope not!)

The thought (of wanting a guy to talk with about stuff like this) occurs to me semi-regularly.

Of course, do I really want to sit there and listen to someone else go on a tangent that has nothing to do with obese Jeshurun?

That's not really what I had in mind.

What I have in mind is more like a cure-all for these moments of wistfulness.

Realistic expectation? No.

But it was a nice thought.

(I wouldn't mind hearing his thoughts too, my head is just hurting right now so I'm leaving out commas I should add now that I'm proofreading, and not being clear about what I mean. Of course a real person is better than a placebo! And basically, singles sometimes think in terms of Disney 2D static characters without realizing it. At least I have a tendency to :( ).

Instead I have the internet (you) and the God whom I should care more about being in communion with than a fella.

"There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,
Who rides the heavens to help you" (Deut. 33:26)

(I really need to look that up!)

195: most recent thoughts on believing in the beauty of God's unknown plan

I have completely lost my voice, it's getting close to a time when I should be getting ready for bed, my throat feels scratchy, but I want to write what I've been thinking. Might not be as coherent or well-examined (or succinct!) as if I had more time. Disclaimer there.

Do I believe in the beauty of God's design? Do I believe in the beauty of His redemption?

I'm reading Laura Story's When God Doesn't Fix It. For those who don't know, Laura Story is a Christian songwriter. Shortly after she and her husband Martin married, he suffered from brain trauma and now has short term memory loss (reminiscent of the movie Remember Sunday but not that bad). Her dream had always been to be a stay at home mom, like her mom before her. But instead she had to deal with seeing that dream die as she became the breadwinner for the family. And she and her husband have had to walk through his medical issues and figuring out how to do life differently than they had ever imagined. She writes:

"When Martin and I said, 'I do,' we set out on a boulevard of marital bliss. Then came a bumpy detour called 'Brain Tumor.' We took the detour and followed its winding ways. but I kept thinking the detour would take us back to the main road. It took me several years to realize that it wasn't a detour; it was the road. It was taking us farther away from anything familiar and would never lead us back to the boulevard of dreams where we started. . . .
 
I had to reconsider other dreams. Our parents had always been our role models--both our dads worked outside the home while our moms took care of their homes and children. That was our dream too. I'd always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Now my only option was to a be a working mom. I didn't know what that would look like, or even if I could do it." (ch. 9)

"It's easy to sign up for a short-term mission project or donate money . . . . But would you be willing to sign up for the brokenness in your life, if you knew your brokenness would bring glory to God and enable you to learn to trust him in everything?" (ch. 10)

"When Martin and I walked through his medical trials, we saw a lot of things die. Our vision for our future. Our dreams for each other. Our idea of a perfect family. Sometimes they died all at once; other times, our dreams slowly withered away. When they did, I thought they were gone forever. But occasionally God allows a dream to die so that we can see his power greatly displayed." (ch. 16)

(I did NOT summarize the book, just picked the relevant parts, so get the book for yourself! Here's a vid of Laura Story singing her song "Blessings.")

My mom and I went to Sight & Sound's movie production of "Jonah" last night. They characterized Jonah as a man who had been waiting for 17 years for God to give him another prophecy. When he heard God say He was going to destroy Ninevah, Jonah was ecstatic. Then he realized, wait, why would God tell him to warn them unless . . . . And at that point Jonah began fighting God. He wished God had never spoke to him. He told God He was asking too much of him. He ran away. He decided he couldn't do what God asked and decided to disobey and separate himself from God. He even was willing to be thrown into the sea and die instead of having to do what God wanted him to do. Of course, God kept him alive. God got him to the point of reluctant obedience.

When I think of redemption, I think of a mosaic sun catcher of colored broken glass. Like something made "perfectly" has been broken and recreated. Usually I think of the breaking being a result of sin, and so God redeems the ugly to make something beautiful.

What if God does, or allows, the breaking? What if He breaks what I think is perfect? How much do I believe that whatever beauty He is going to create from the brokenness is better than what I thought was perfect?

We all have what we think is perfect. And we all experience brokenness. It is common to man.

Ok, not sure where I was going with that.

Not sure where the thread of Laura Story and Jonah and the mosaic weave together....

God. Do I trust God when He breaks my plans and presents me with the unknown. Do I look at the unknown and then look back to Egypt and say, but THAT would have been better, Lord? Or do I look at the unknown and say, You are good, You create amazing beauty, and I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Or is it (more likely) two steps forward in faith and one step back in wishful thinking?

How much do I trust that, in His power, He will make something more beautiful (by His definition) than I would have, and how much am I willing to let Him?

Rainbow Suncatcher by Elsieland Mosaics on Flickr

194: ...and a sound mind

Fear. It's powerful in relationships. It's no coincidence that when 2 Timothy 1:7 says that "God has not given us a spirit of fear" that the corollary is His giving us "a sound mind." Because when I am fearful about a relationship, I do not have a sound mind. Obsessive. Overanalyzing. Worried. Stressed. Predicting the future. Jumping to conclusions. Reading into things. Seeing doom. Giving up. And all within hours of the last interaction.

There is no buoyant hope. No steadiness. No waiting to see what will happen next if I let it rest a day in God's hands.

If I squint and cock my head, I can vaguely see the writing on the wall, and even though I have no divine interpreter, I can agonizingly surmise it says, "This person has been weighed on the scales and found wanting; this relationship's days are numbered." The former butterflies in my stomach transform into a knot that drags me under. No more information needed. It's the end. I'm going to bed.

Been there, done that, Lord, please, teach me to have a sound mind.

The other day I was sitting across from a little girl who deals with possessiveness when it comes to friendships. And one of her male friends had been particularly chummy with another person lately. Not good. So as we sat there coloring, she told me resignedly, "So, I think this *her name* and *his name* thing is over." After I got over the humor of hearing a little girl refer to herself in the third person, I started talking to her about how friendships go up and down, and, yes, it's hard when we have to wait. She was like, "I know. It's been TWO days." Inwardly chuckling, I replied, "And it feels like FOREVER." But it's not. It's hard to wait. It's really hard. But things will change. (I may have even promised her chocolate if it doesn't . . . I don't always have wisdom when interacting with kids.)

I know firsthand how hard it is to wait and want a guy and try to surrender him to God and then see him get married and want any guy and get one and lose one and spend months recovering from the loss and wait some more. I literally know emotional pain very well, like the back of my hand, like an old blankie actually.

I also know that God has been there with me in every painful season of my life. He has been so close. I also know that the days upon days that sucked me under were seasons. They did not last. Two days is not forever. A painful day or two (or week) where the anxiety over a guy makes me want to keep sleeping and I'm eating two bowls full of chocolate ice cream and yet my stomach still is in knots? It will not always be like that.

But even if the disappointment is more severe, God has been with me through so much emotional turbulence already, and He's continually taking me back to the basics of who He is as my baseline. He is my baseline. THE baseline, apart from me. My life will have highs and lows. But the Rock does not change. Do you know how much having a sound mind is related to clinging to that Rock and knowing He'll get me through even this, because I've seen Him do it in the past over and over? My memorial stones were agonizingly set, but they are there, witnesses of God's faithfulness.

God has also blessed me with people who listen when I'm hovering at irrational highs and dragging through irrational lows. Sometimes they just listen; sometimes they speak steadiness and insight into my crazy, rubberbanding, emotional self.

Fear. It's powerful in relationships. But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

During a very hard season,

I played/sang this song over and over.

Book Review: Long Time Gone by Mary Connealy

Long Time Gone is the second book of The Cimarron Legacy series. I remember where I was when I read the first book. It was last summer, and I was out in the back yard on our lounge chair. When the book ended, I felt all delicious and so ready to read more about the Bodens and Sadie and Heath.

I have loved everything I have read by Mary Connealy. She always grabs your attention right away and perfectly combines suspense, action, and romance.

So I don't know if it was because I have more recently been reading Regency Era fiction (so different from Western!), or because I was struggling to recapture my first impressions of this book's main character from when he was introduced in last summer's book, or if it was because the author spent chapters upon chapters re-establishing the plot so we wouldn't be confused, but I didn't feel like this book picked up the pace until around chapter 12.

Long Time Gone is the continuation of No Way Up. The characters are trying to figure out the reason behind all the chaos in book one. Which means there is a lot more sitting around talking and trying to piece the puzzle together than Connealy's normal fare.

The romance too, while fun once it started, seemed to go way too fast, like time in each other's presence was implied, but I didn't even realize it had happened.

In the past, I have marveled at how smoothly Connealy writes--flawlessly smooth. This book wasn't like that at all. It felt more haphazard and pieced together. (Example: I didn't like that when it was Angie's time in the spotlight, the point of view was more omniscient than her POV.) The end was the best part (and it was really good!), but then it was over.

I still want to see what happens in the next book--so little happened in this one--but I have to give Long Time Gone 3 out of 5 stars unfortunately.

193: reminder to self to not let sin become normal to me

Some more thoughts based off of the Facebook buzz these days:

The world acting like the world is not an excuse to accept it as okay for us. I often hear the phrase "all sin is equal," or a similar phrasing. While I think you could argue from Scripture that that is not accurate, even if it is, this phrase always seems to be used to 1) excuse sexual sin, or 2) point out the hypocrisy of making a bigger deal out of a behavior than an attitude.

But if we are going to argue that all sin is equal, then that should encourage us to become even more sensitive to the evil of sin, and to increase our fear of the Lord. It should not make us timid to take a personal stand against sin in fear that we are casting the first stone and ignoring the plank in our own eye. Our beliefs and convictions are not based on our perfection but God's holiness. It should make us more diligent to personally repent and recalibrate our lives as we see the contrast between God's holiness and our rebellion.

It's as if because we accept that the world is acting like the world, and that our pride is on par to other sins, that we then lay down our battle standards and accept sin as normal. Not just normal to the world. Just normal. Normal to us.

He had to DIE--God in the flesh--and yet we'll let sin entertain us? I bring up entertainment because that's what the conversation is about these days. I'm not talking about making every movie a Christian-themed movie or one where no character acts fallen. I'm talking about when the sin is part of the entertainment. When it becomes part of the turning off our minds and being fed as acceptable what Jesus had to die to deliver us from. When we become okay with that. Living in the world but not of it . . . except when we willingly breathe in the world's values from the comfort of our Christian homes as part of the pleasure of our souls.

I'm not even thinking about dictating to the world what movies should or should not be made, though as consumers we should let our voice be heard. And I'm not talking about "judging the world." I'm referring to when we as confessing believers are tempted to mindlessly submit to, and defend (!!), the world's standard. We do not need to be slaves to what passes as today's entertainment. We serve God Almighty before Whom His created beings cover their faces or fall on their faces crying, "Holy, holy, holy!" That is our standard. We compare what is acceptable to that, not to what is accepted by "good people," or mainstream Christianity, today. God help me.

I write because I am so easily influenced. I so easily take on the flavors and scents of whatever I am around, the opinions of Facebook, of spoken words swirling around me mixed with the culture of the age. I must recalibrate myself to the truth sometimes, drawing the line in the sand even as I struggle to get on the right side of that line.

If sin is sin, then let's treat it as such and not accept it as the world has.

"People are requesting prayer regarding their besetting sins and character weaknesses instead of coming in honesty and humility to God and saying, 'I am constantly tempted to commit this sin because I love this sin. I do not hate it. I need the fear of God. O God, give me a hatred for what I now love. I receive it by faith in Jesus' name.'" --Joy Dawson, Intimate Friendship with God

"knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin" --Romans 6:6

P.S. This is not my opinion on Beauty and the Beast. This is my reminder to not let my standards fall in general.

192: what I meant and reminder to self about His goodness and my entertainment

By my previous post I was not saying we should or should not watch movies with objectionable content, or that we should or should not continue making the same movie choices we have been comfortable making in the past.

I was saying that the logic that justified former choices must carry us through now. That's the nature of logic. You can't justify one while condemning another.

And so I suggested--or attempted to suggest--that we let this opportunity cause us again to examine our logic, check our justification, hold up our choices to the light of God's holiness, the Light Who searches out the deep recesses of our hearts.

Hold up our choices to the Light...

(and here is where I squirm and want to NOT think about this)

...keep them there...

...let not only the Savior of our sins but also the One who is pure righteousness shine brightly on our lives...

...until He gives us peace to move on.

I don't need to automatically assume He's displeased with my choices. I also don't need to shrink away from the brightness of His glory in fear of what lesser things He might actually require me to give up. He is good. I've got to remember that. He's got my back. He knows what holes giving up this show or that movie would cause in my life (I sound melodramatic--ah well). Again, He is good. If I'm really following Him, then whatever I have to lose (if anything!) by letting His Light shine on my Netflix, YouTube, and movie tickets will be well made up in gaining more of Him.

So maybe we can hold up our choices to the Light once more, trusting in His goodness, surrendered to His direction.

191: where on earth do we draw the line

With the news that the upcoming, and much anticipated, live-action Beauty and the Beast remake will be a "watershed moment" for Disney, the question niggles at me, "Where will we draw the line?"

Alisha Rouse for the "Daily Mail" writes:

In an interview with Attitude magazine, director Bill Condon said: ‘LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston.

‘He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realising that he has these feelings. It is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.’

Mr Condon said the character, played by Josh Gad, is part of a ‘watershed moment’ for Disney. He said: ‘The studio is sending out a message that this is normal and natural – and this is a message that will be heard in every country of the world, even countries where it’s still socially unacceptable or even illegal to be gay.’

Now, I understand that sometimes the news is all hype--like when Facebook exploded with the "lesbian" scene in Finding Dory. And, granted, no one has seen Beauty and the Beast and declared it to have a homosexual element. But when the director of the film says that, through the character of LeFou, Disney is "sending out a message that this is normal and natural," I think we can say the intent is pretty clear.

Immediately I asked myself whether that would affect my plans to see the new remake. Would this slap in the face of Biblical values and Judeo-Christian conservatism produce any more than a small blip in my plans to patronize the theater later this month?

And what has led us as a Christian culture to consider letting an "exclusively gay moment" in a classic fairy tale not affect us?

One of the few TV shows I actually let the world of Facebook know I watch is Doctor Who. It is relatively clean, both in language and sensuality. But in the first several seasons--the best seasons, in my opinion--there's Captain Jack Harkness, blatantly gay both on and off screen.

One of the movies I don't openly tell people I like, but happen to like, is Leap Year. While there isn't any homosexuality, the movie does have two characters that live together--in fact, the only reason they're able to get an apartment in an exclusive community is by telling the board that they are going to marry (I mean, we were going to eventually, so why not now?).

Sherlock--which I just finished watching for the first time in the last month or so--is decidedly pro-gay and pro-fornication. It's not the main focus of the show--it's not why we become so enthralled with the characters--but it's there. Perhaps even more overtly than it will be in Beauty and the Beast.

So where do we draw the line?

Even Christy and Signed, Sealed, and Delivered, extremely innocent TV shows that they are--and that I've loved--explore themes of believers falling in love with non-believers without any insinuation that that is extremely foolhardy.

I feel a little like the frog being boiled in water--immorality as Biblically defined has become such a normal part of entertainment that I have accepted it even while keeping in the back of my mind that "that scene/character/theme is wrong."

So what's the big deal if Beauty and the Beast will be a watershed moment for Disney? For us believers, it's just another movie we'll enjoy. Maybe we'll give a caviat when recommending it, because, well, some people might not want their kids to be exposed to that, or, it's not something you would expect it in a cartoon remake. But as adults, we will watch the movie because how can we condemn this film and yet swallow hook-line-and-sinker all these other shows we enjoy that are as bad or worse?

Be holy as I am holy, He says.

So where do we draw the line?

P.S. And how far have we come? When I was a child, I tore up my VHS copy of Beauty and the Beast--even though it was a favorite--because of Biblically-condemned bestiality and witchcraft.
(If you wish to read the full article by the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4269824/Disney-puts-gay-scene-Beauty-Beast.html#ixzz4a7NroFNr )